Joseph Naper

Joseph Naper (1798-1862) was the founder of Naperville, Illinois and a member of the State House in 1836.

Biography
Joseph Naper was born in Bennington, Vermont in 1798, and he and his family settled in Ashtabula, Ohio during his youth. Naperville became a landowner near Fort Dearborn on Lake Michigan, and, in 1831, he created a settlement in Illinois which would come to be known as "Naperville". Naper served in a militia company during the Black Hawk War of 1832, and he was then elected to the State House for the first time in 1836 and supervised the 1839 creation of DuPage County from portions of Cook County. In 1846, he returned to the military during the Mexican-American War, and he became a major plank road stockholder during the 1850s and returned to the General Assembly in 1852. In 1857, he became the first village president of Naperville, and he died in Naperville in 1862.